The Traitor's Story (6 page)

Chapter Eight

Jonas was wearing a different hat. It was the same design, but from this distance Finn could see that it was knitted, a more traditional alpine pattern. It was the only thing that would have differentiated surveillance footage from the two nights, because his behavior was identical: the walking, the checking his watch, the looking up at the empty apartment.

Finn had slipped out of the building and moved a little farther along the street. Now, having watched Jonas for a few minutes, and having once more looked up at the lit windows of the Portmans’ apartment, he crossed the street and started walking casually toward the kid.

He thought it was odd that Jonas didn’t seem to look at the Portmans’ place himself. Presumably, he knew Hailey wasn’t there and wouldn’t be there. He probably wasn’t much interested, either, in what her parents were going through, whether because of autism or adolescence.

Finn had his head bowed slightly as he walked, as if against the cold. He was certain that Jonas would run again if he recognized him or suspected anything amiss. Finn tensed slightly as he realized Jonas was looking at him, but the kid clearly discounted him as a threat, because he turned back to the apartment block.

By the time Jonas turned a second time, Finn was more relaxed—he was only a few feet away and knew he’d catch him even if he did bolt. Finn raised his head and, noting the kid’s look of alarm, smiled at him as he spoke.

“Hi Jonas, don’t worry, I just want to—”

The kid ran.

Finn set off after him, and almost immediately doubted he’d
catch him. Jonas was fast, and apparently determined that this con
versation wouldn’t take place. Finn wondered if Jonas hadn’t recognized him, if perhaps he suspected Finn of being connected in some way with Gibson.

Either way, Finn was regretting not having that coffee. He seemed to be lumbering, unable to find a rhythm, in his legs, his breathing, his heartbeat, his footsteps falling heavy on the pavement, jarring through him. Jonas was increasing the distance between them with each of his steps—steps that Finn couldn’t help notice made no sound at all.

He hadn’t wanted to do this, but Finn guessed he would have to ask Ethan and Debbie for the kid’s address, to visit him at home, with all the potential problems that would raise. And just as he was resigned to it, the distance growing to the point of losing sight of him in the dusk, Jonas stopped as suddenly as he’d taken off.

Finn kept running. The kid had reached a junction with another street and was now staring up it at something that had caught his attention. It had really caught his attention, too, because he completely ignored Finn’s approach.

As Finn reached him, he took a glance in the same direction and saw someone on a bike, dressed in proper cycling gear, lights blinking as he disappeared up the street. The kid thought it might be Gibson, that much was clear.

“It’s not him,” Finn said. “He left.”

Jonas turned, as if shocked by his sudden appearance, and looked ready to set off again, but Finn reached out and grabbed his arm, only lightly, but enough of a contact that he knew he’d be able to stop him running. It was just as well—Finn had no more running in him.

“You must remember me? I’m Finn, Hailey’s neighbor from upstairs. Adrienne’s boyfriend.” For the first time in his life, “boyfriend” felt ridiculous, and he half expected Jonas to tell him he was too old to be anyone’s boyfriend.

“Adrienne left.”

Had Finn heard him speak before? For some reason, he’d imagined him talking with a slightly Germanic accent. He was half-Austrian, half-Australian, that’s what they’d told him, but his accent, if anything, sounded vaguely mid-Atlantic.

“Yeah, she did. Everyone seems to be leaving right now. First Adrienne, then Gibson . . .” Jonas looked confused at the mention of the name. “That’s the name of the guy who lived in the apartment next to Hailey. Which brings us to the final disappearance.”

“She didn’t tell me where she was going.”

“I know. Now promise me you won’t run again. I need to talk to you, Jonas, and if you run away from me I’ll just have to come to your house, speak with your parents.”

Jonas laughed. At first Finn thought it was just at the plea for him not to run again, but then he realized it had been the implied threat of involving his parents—this was clearly a kid who didn’t fear such things.

“How do you know she didn’t tell me?”

Finn let go of his arm. “Ethan and Debbie have asked me to help find her. They told me you’d been asked and said you didn’t know, and they said you don’t lie.”

“Everyone lies.” Jonas looked back up the street, but the cyclist had long since disappeared. “Why would they ask you to help find her? Don’t you write books about history?”

“Yes, I do, but—”

“It’s because you used to be a spy. Hailey told me.”

“I didn’t used to be a spy—that’s just what they think, what Adrienne thinks. You know, it’s quite hard to prove that you weren’t a spy.”

“You’re not doing a very good job right now.” Jonas smiled, not needing to spell it out, then appeared to dismiss the subject and move on. “Mr. and Mrs. Portman think I have Asperger’s—I expect they told you that. It’s a pet theory of theirs, and you needn’t deny it, because that’s why they think I don’t lie.”

“Do you? Lie, that is.”

Jonas laughed. “No, but not because of any moral position or intellectual incapacity—I just have very little about which I need to lie. I don’t have Asperger’s, either.”

“I didn’t say you did.”

Still, it seemed to be something that irked the kid, because he couldn’t resist saying, “Mr. and Mrs. Portman are good people of above average but not exceptional intelligence. They’ve succeeded through a combination of nature, nurture, and hard work, and most of the people they mix with are the same. So if they meet someone who deviates from that norm, it unsettles them. They’d prefer to think of me as an idiot savant than someone whose brain simply happens to work in a freer and more complex way than theirs.”

Finn assumed Jonas hadn’t spoken to the police like this, because if he had they’d probably have put him on a suspect list and taken him in for questioning—for all the reasons Jonas had just suggested.

“And what about Hailey—how does she do on the intelligence
scale?”

“Different, from them and from me. She doesn’t have ideas the way I do, and she can stare at a puzzle and have absolutely no interest in solving it, but she thinks deeply about things. You know, she’s truly profound. It blows me away sometimes. She’ll recommend a book and I read it, but then she talks about it and I see it in a completely different light. She’s amazing.”

There it was: Jonas was in love with Hailey Portman. His eyes were sparkling now, his face animated, as if it wasn’t enough to be in love with her, he also had to communicate that love, to help a relative stranger understand how incredible she was.

That explained his vigil, too, his need to find her, to ensure that no harm came to her. Finn noticed him shiver as a cold wind found the junction on which they stood.

“It’s cold, Jonas. Let’s go and grab a coffee somewhere and then you can tell me what you know, and why you’re watching Gibson’s apartment.”

“Okay.” Jonas started walking. Finn fell in with him, guessing he knew a coffee shop and was heading for it. “You can tell me about Gibson, too.”

“Maybe. I don’t know much.”

“He’s the reason she left.” Finn looked at him questioningly. “She was scared. I was scared, too.” He pointed ahead, and Finn stared for a moment before spotting the coffee shop, which wasn’t one that he’d ever noticed before, but then Jonas looked at him earnestly and said, “Actually, I’m still a bit scared.”

Chapter Nine

Jonas took his hat off as he walked in. Again, Finn was sure he must have seen him without a hat before, but he was surprised somehow to see the brown, tousled hair. The kid was disturbingly good-looking, and as they sat down Finn noticed one of the waitresses and two young women at a nearby table giving him intrigued glances.

But if Jonas knew he was intelligent, he either didn’t know or didn’t care that he was good-looking. His whole view of that probably came down to whether Hailey found him attractive, and Finn suspected this wasn’t the time to be asking about the nature of their relationship.

Jonas ordered a hot chocolate, Finn a black coffee.

“Okay, Jonas, let’s start from the beginning. What’s your history with Gibson?” Jonas looked confused, so for the second time Finn explained, “That’s the name of Hailey’s neighbor.”

“I know that, you already told me. But we don’t have any
history
with Gibson. We’ve never even spoken to him, we just accidentally spied on him.”

“Okay, so tell me about that.”

Jonas nodded, apparently acknowledging that it was a fair request, and said, “Hailey and me, we do a lot of the same classes, so we often work together at her apartment or mine.” He glanced across at the waitress, who smiled back at him, a smile that was interested. She looked in her late teens herself, and Jonas probably looked more than fifteen. “I think we should split the bill, if you don’t mind. I think it would be inappropriate for you to pay for me. After all, I don’t really know you that well.”

Finn took a moment to catch up with the sudden change of subject. “I hadn’t given it much thought, but since when did buying someone a hot chocolate count as inappropriate? Actually, for something like this I think it’s stranger to split the bill. What would you and Hailey do if you were out having coffee?”

“That’s a very different scenario, you can’t compare the two—but you do make a good point.” Jonas thought about it, as if Gibson had been forgotten, and added, “As I chose the venue, on this occasion I’ll pay.”

“Okay.” Oddly, Finn still accepted the kid’s earlier assertion that he didn’t have Asperger’s, but there was something out of the ordinary about him—the words “different drummer” spun through his mind.

Satisfied, and without registering that there had been a break in his story, Jonas said, “More often than not hers, because I have a younger sister, who’s pretty cool, but she thinks Hailey is amazing so she never leaves us alone.”

“Do you hang out together when you’re not studying?”

Jonas looked suspicious, but said, “Of course. Anyway, about three weeks ago I was explaining to Hailey about how networks aren’t always secure, and I used her computer—I installed Linux onto it last year—and picked up a network that I now know was Mr. Gibson’s. I don’t understand why he needed a network at all, except for desktop to laptop maybe, but I would do it wired if I cared about privacy, and the guy was using WPA but with a PSK, so it was easy. The guy was sharing files between his computers, and within an hour we were sharing them with him.”

“Jonas, I write history books. I have no idea what you just said.”

Their drinks came and Jonas sipped his immediately. He had froth on his top lip as he started talking again.

“I didn’t explain it very well.”

“You have froth on your lip.”

He wiped it off and said, “Thanks. Basically, and I only did this to prove a point, I hacked into Mr. Gibson’s network. Over a couple of days, I just dug around, and we copied a whole load of information.”

“
We
?”

“We. Hailey knows her stuff. I mean, software and computers aren’t really her thing—they’re not even mine—but she still knows her way around.”

“Okay.” Neither of them struck him as archetypal geeks, but then as Jonas had said, this wasn’t an obsession for them, just something they considered normal for a wired teenager. “Presumably, Gibson found out.”

“First thing we knew was when all activity ceased. I thought he’d gone away. But then his network went live again, this time with the kind of security he should have had in place to begin with.”

“So you couldn’t hack into it?”

“I doubt even a hacker would have been able to hack into it, but like I said, it’s not really my thing. I mean, that’s what’s crazy about what happened—we weren’t even interested in his stuff. We just did it to prove to ourselves that we could.” He took another sip of his drink and said, “Do I have froth on my lip?”

“No.” Finn stifled a laugh and took a gulp of his coffee, too hot, before saying, “Go on.”

“With what?”

“What happened next?”

“He spoke to Mr. and Mrs. Portman. He just knocked on their door and was all friendly, like it was just a misunderstanding, wondering if their daughter had accidentally accessed his network. He made some joke about not understanding how it worked but his technician had told him that’s what had happened. Only it wasn’t a joke if you think about it, because he actually didn’t understand it—if he did he would have had the right security to begin with.”

Finn nodded, but he was wondering why Ethan and Debbie hadn’t mentioned this. He’d specifically asked about Gibson, about the possibility of his departure being linked with Hailey’s disappearance, and they hadn’t mentioned that he’d spoken to them. It might just have slipped their minds, he supposed, but it was odd that they’d remembered other unimportant things and forgotten that.

Finn said, “Hailey said she hadn’t, of course.”

“She was clever. She said she didn’t think so, then asked if she’d know about it or if it was possible to do it by accident.”

“Smart reply.”
Devious
, he thought to himself. Hailey Portman was devious, a fact that filled him with a little more optimism.

But Jonas said, “Not smart enough. A few times, she noticed him staring at her from his window as she came in, then one night a car followed her when she was walking home from my house, then someone broke into their apartment.”

“Into the Portmans’ apartment?” Jonas nodded, and Finn was once again knocked back, wondering why they hadn’t mentioned this to him, wondering if they’d mentioned it to the police.

Then he came to the obvious—perhaps too obvious—conclusion, that these were just kids with overactive imaginations. How many teenage girls haven’t thought they were being followed at some point or other? And by a car? It suggested a kid who’d seen too many made-for-TV thrillers.

“They didn’t take anything, but Hailey knew they’d searched her room. Of course, they’d tried to access her laptop, too, but thanks to Linux, they didn’t stand a chance.”

Finn thought again about how devious Hailey was, and hit upon another explanation, one that depressed him, because it made a fool
of Jonas and he was already taking to the kid. But he had to admit, it seemed a lot more likely than a psychotic hedge fund manager.

Hailey had changed her image, which his instinct told him was a response to a boy—or a man. She’d wanted to go and meet him, had wanted a reason for doing so, and had fabricated these various threats: the pursuing car, the searched room. If she was really smart, she might even have cajoled Jonas into hacking Gibson’s network in the first place, setting up the scenario in advance.

“What do you think they were searching for?”

Jonas shrugged. “The material we collected, I guess.”

“They could have just taken the laptop.”

“True.” Jonas thought about it and said, “It wouldn’t have helped them, but they weren’t to know that. Of course, it would have made Hailey’s room a crime scene, instead of the location for a teenager’s paranoid fancies.”

Finn laughed, impressed on some level—it was as if Jonas had read his thoughts and sought to counter them.

“What’s funny, Mr. Harrington?”

“Please, call me Finn, and what’s funny is that I
was
wondering how much of a break-in there had been.” He didn’t spell out that it wasn’t paranoia he suspected, for fear of hurting the kid’s feelings. Besides, he wasn’t certain yet, about any of it.

“It’s a natural conclusion, one her parents also came to, though perhaps for different reasons.”

“You said it wouldn’t have helped them if they’d stolen the computer. What did you mean by that?”

The two girls who’d been at a neighboring table got up and left, one of them looking back at Jonas two or three times, trying to make eye contact. At the very last, Jonas noticed her and threw a shy and slightly lost smile back at her. Seeing it made Finn feel like a ghost.

Jonas turned back to him. “We put it on a memory stick. Hailey has it.”

“She could have left it in her room.”

“No, she would’ve taken it with her.”

“You don’t have a copy?”

The kid shook his head and took a deep draft of his hot chocolate.

“I made some notes, but I didn’t have a copy of the files. I don’t have my notebook with me. It’s a Moleskine, which is what Hemingway used, though really it’s just a brand now. I don’t much like Hemingway, anyway.”

“
The Old Man and the Sea
was pretty good.”

“True. But don’t you think it’s the idea of Hemingway that people like, rather than the writing?”

Finn nodded, smiling. “That’s an interesting theory. I like that.”

Jonas smiled, too—flattered, even a little embarrassed.

“But, tell me, the information you hacked, did it seem sensitive?” Thinking of Gibson’s possible careers, he added, “Did it deal with stock information, perhaps, or sensitive industrial data?”

“It didn’t seem to relate to anything that we could make sense of. If I showed you my notebook it might give you an idea of how random it was.”

“You can’t remember any of it now?”

“Little bits.” He thought for a moment. “It mentioned Helsinki. I remember that because I’ve been to Helsinki.”

Finn looked at him expectantly.

“It mentioned . . . let me get this right. It mentioned ‘Albigensian,’
but then another note said he should disregard that comment.”

Finn could almost feel his thoughts tumbling away into an abyss, could feel his body tightening.

“Albigensian?”

“Yeah. I checked it out because I’d never heard of it—it’s from the Albigensian Crusade, which wasn’t against Islam, it was against—”

“The Cathars. It’s what my new book is about.”

Jonas looked lost for words momentarily, then said, “Hold on, you don’t have a network in your apartment?” Finn shook his head.
Jonas was ahead of him, though, saying, “But no, it was Mr. Gibson’s network, I know it was. Do you think he was spying on you?”

“Could be a coincidence,” said Finn, but he knew that it wasn’t, looking instead for the least troubling explanation for why he might be under surveillance again after all this time.

Jonas checked his watch, then attracted the attention of the waitress and said, “I have to go now, but if we meet tomorrow, I’ll bring my notebook.”

“I’d appreciate that,” said Finn, then watched as Jonas settled the bill with the smitten waitress.

His mind was racing. They’d left him alone for the best part of six years, the terms of his departure agreed upon, a line drawn under it. So why would they be showing an interest again now? Unless the mention of “Albigensian” really had been a coincidence, something that seemed too unlikely but that he still wanted to hold on to as a possibility.

They walked out into the cold together and arranged a time to meet—Jonas had the following afternoon free, which made it easier—and a place: the same coffee shop. And then Finn thanked him and Jonas walked away.

Only after Finn had started walking did he hear Jonas call him. He turned and looked, and Jonas shouted, “I remember something else. Something he talked about a lot.”

“What was it?”

“Sparrowhawk,” said Jonas. “You know, like the bird of prey? Sparrowhawk!” He shrugged, as if to suggest how absurd it was. And he waved and walked along the street and left Finn standing there, knowing that it was over, that Adrienne had left at the right time, because the life he’d constructed over the last six years, already insubstantial, had just evaporated.